Wyngarden held his head in his hands as the verdicts were read about 3 p.m. Friday.

“I didn’t do this,” he said as he was taken out of the courtroom by Ottawa County Sheriff’s Office deputies. Family members who supported Wyngarden through the three-week trial wept in the courtroom.

After sentencing at 11:30 a.m. April 21, Wyngarden will spend the rest of his life in prison.

The jury deliberated about four-and-a-half hours on Friday in Ottawa County Circuit Court in Grand Haven, convicting Wyngarden, 51, of Zeeland, on two counts of first-degree premeditated murder for the deaths of his sister Gail and her husband Rick on Nov. 21, 1987, in their Park Township home on Ransom Street.

Budd Brink said his brother knew who killed him.

“I think my brother looked him in the eye. That’s a haunting thought,” he said.

“We’re done. We finally got him,” said Cheryl Murphree, Wyngarden’s brother and Gail’s older sister. “He created this situation and now he has to pay for it.”

She said she still loves her brother, “but I hate what he did and I hate the person he became. My sister has been dead for 27 years because of his act. It hurts my heart,” she said.

The prosecution, led by attorney Lee Fisher, said Wyngarden killed the couple because he was jealous of their success and didn’t want his sister to tell Rick, 28, about Wyngarden’s sexual relations with Gail, 22, when they were younger.

Wyngarden characterized the sexual contact as “comparing body parts” and exploring, but the prosecution said his accounts were most likely “a water-down version” of events.

“I don’t call it sexual intimacy. I call it sexual molestation,” Fisher said, and that the defendant killed Gail to keep the information secret.

The prosecution also pointed out inconsistencies in Wyngarden’s testimony that showed his alibi was false.

The case centered on the testimony of Pam Wyngarden, Ryan Wyngarden’s wife, who told police in January 2013 that her husband confessed to the killings on that November 1987 weekend.

“She was simply unable to carry the burden inside for 25 years,” Fisher said in closing arguments. “She had a chance to right a wrong and she did it — at a great cost to her.”

Pam Wyngarden said that her testimony, first heard in public at a February 2013 preliminary examination, has divided her family, setting siblings against siblings and destroying traditions of family gatherings.

Page 2 of 2 - Budd Brink called Pam Wyngarden’s testimony a “double-edged sword.” He wished she had brought it forward in 1987.

“That’s then. Today is today,” he said.

Budd Brink with his wife Melinda stood in the courtroom after the verdict flanked by prosecutors Fisher and Doug Mesman and cold case team detectives Dave Blakely and Venus Repper.

Budd Brink credited the detectives for their fresh investigation into the killings after they approached the family in August 2011.

“We said, ‘Great. We want to do this,’” Budd Brink said.

The cold case team was formed in 2009 to look at three unsolved cases — Deb Wilson, the Brinks and Deborah Lynn Polinsky.

The first case the team looked at was the Wilson murder. She was stabbed to death in Holland Township on Dec. 24, 1987. The primary suspect in that murder has died, Repper said.

Polinsky, 20, was stabbed to death at her Port Sheldon Township home on July 26, 1977. No weapon was found and the case remains open.

“We worked one case. We focused on that case,” she said in testimony on March 19.

The team then began looking at the Brink murders in 2011 by organizing files, reviewing evidence and contacting family members and other sources. The team did 250 interviews for this case, Repper said.

They interviewed people who were not contacted in 1987.

In reviewing reports, Repper said that in one interview from 1988, it appeared Pam Wyngarden recanted her testimony about the alibi of where she and her husband Ryan were on the night of the murders. They interviewed Pam in October 2012, then again on January 2013. Ryan Wyngarden was arrested Jan. 18, 2013.

Wyngarden’s defense led by attorney David Hall said the couple could have been killed in a case of mistaken identity because the previous owner of the Brink house dealt drugs brought from Detroit and was a police informant.

Wyngarden was on the witness stand for three days where he contradicted some of his earlier testimony about his location on the weekend of the murder.

When on the stand, Wyngarden was argumentative with the attorneys — even his own — and the judge, who repeatedly warned him his demeanor could hurt his case with the jury.

— The Associated Press contributed to this report. Follow Jim Hayden on Twitter@SentinelJim.